How to give Bill Mantlo something to smile about this holiday season

One of the followers of this blog (Rick Hansen, thanks!) posted a blog link on Facebook to an article about Bill Mantlo's situation these days. I'm sure you all don't need me to retell the sad tale about his accident and hospitalization. The article largely consists of an update on his condition but more importantly it'll let you know what you can do to make his life a bit easier. For all of you who are hard up financially right now (who isn't these days!?) don't worry it's not about money save perhaps a postage stamp. It has to do with mailing him a little something like a short thank you note or perhaps a copy of some fan art related to his past work. I'm going to be putting something of a care package together for him with hard copies of this blog and the ROM Spaceknight Forever 2.0 Youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iU_Q-KHiWk&feature=related among other things so that he can see how much his legacy still lives on. That would be cool if he had internet access there at the care taker facility he is at.
All the information about how and where to mail your letters/art work can be found at this link: http://www.co2comics.com/blog/2011/11/21/give-thanks-to-bill-mantlo/comment-page-1/#comment-1724 Please read it carefully and follow the instructions before preparing your letters/slash art work. If you've been thinking about doing some kind of fan art related to Bill's work during his career in the comic industry now is the time to get up off your butt and just get it done in time to send a copy of it to Bill before X-Mass and New Years. Please don't delay, it's really a small thing that could make a big difference to a man who gave us so much and most certainly is not better off then you are in all probability.

Now hear this! I'm in the process of producing another ROM multimedia slide show presentation video. I will feature any fan art produced for Bill Mantlo in it as well as on this blog. By the way folks Mike Mantlo just left a comment on the blog posting I left a link to just above.

The Universal Inhumans & The Dire Wraiths, ok finally now I get it. Fantastic 4 #577 found in $1 bin

I was browsing through a dollar bin at this book store in downtown Berkeley after I got off work today and happened to find Fantastic Four #577 which introduced the Universal Inhumans who live in a region of the Moon known as the Blue Area. There's been numerous postings about this issue over the past year or so but as of yet not one of them have been able to explain to me just who are these Universal Inhumans and how is it that a segment of the Dire Wraiths are part of it.
After having read the issue once, and the last 10 pages or so over a couple of times it finally started to make some sense. Apparently the Kree experimented on not just humans but several alien species as well in the hopes of finding a way create a compatible yet diverse gene pool to break the Kree's evolutionary dead end. But only 5 species yielded any positive results. Of course The Inhumans developed from the experiments done on homo-sapiens but in Fantastic Four 577 we would also learn that the Dire Wraiths made up one of 4 alien species that now carried a universal "genetic marker" that would somehow provide the bio-diversity the Kree might need some day.
Evidently Black Bolt of the Inhumans didn't like the idea of being some sort of pawn of the Kree and decided to travel to the Kree home world (Hala) with an Inhuman army to kick some ass and take names. In the meantime a Black Bolt messianic like cult following formed among the other 4 species who are now known as the Universal Inhumans. Their prophecy involves his return and to make all 5 former Kree experimented species one big happy family through a "Big Love" type marriage in which Black Bolt would take an Inhuman wife and one from each of the Universal Inhumans species. This would be a good time to take special note of the dialogue in the clip art. As you can see from the FF #9 (Future Foundations) clip art to the left from September it looks like they all tied the knot already. I wonder how that honey moon went? I'm a bit on the kinky side so I probably could have hooked up with the centurion chick and with his Inhuman wife Medusa. But as far as the other three go forget it not even after a 6 pack!